"Oh, uh, of course." Doole discreetly backed away. "I'll go make sure the mechanics are prepping the shuttle for our return to Kessel." He turned to Luke and forced humor into his tone. "Now, don't go talking your boss out of making an investment here!"

The moment Doole moved out of earshot, Lando nodded excitedly to the freighter. "That's the Falcon, Luke! I know her like a krabbex knows its sh.e.l.l!"

Luke looked at the ship, recognizing it himself but wanting more proof. "You positive?"

"It's the Falcon, Luke. I owned her, remember, before Han stole her from me in a sabacc game. If you look, you can see the streaking scar on top where I knocked off the subs.p.a.ce antenna dish trying to zip away from the Death Star."

Luke also noticed scorch marks from a recent s.p.a.ce combat. "They could have changed the markings, wiped the memory core. Is there any other way we can prove it?"

"Just get me inside the c.o.c.kpit. Han's made some modifications to the ship n.o.body else would know about."

When Doole returned, Lando said, "My a.s.sistant wants to be sure you've been doing thorough maintenance on these ships. If you're not taking care of them, they don't make much of a defensive fleet. Let's take a look inside one at random ... say, that Corellian ship over there."

Doole seemed taken by surprise, glancing at the Falcon. "That one?

Uh, we have plenty of top-notch fighters you can check out. That one is something of a ... piece of junk."

Lando waggled his finger. "If you choose the ship for us, Moruth, that contradicts the whole point of a random inspection, doesn't it? Open this one up. Go on."

Reluctantly, Doole worked the external controls that dropped the Falcon's ramp. Lando took the lead, followed by Luke, while Artoo puttered so closely behind Doole that he nearly ran over the Rybet's heels.

Inside, Lando strode to the c.o.c.kpit, ostensibly to check out the systems. Running his fingers lovingly over the stained, worn surfaces, he flicked a few switches. "Ion-flux stabilizer checks out as optimal, so does the stasis-field generator. Should we go back and check out the power converter? Those things are notorious for breaking down in Corellian freighters."

Lando backed down the narrow corridor leading from the c.o.c.kpit to the central living section of the ship. Turning left toward the entry ramp, he stepped carefully on the main deck plates. From the control panels he had unlatched the hidden locks, and when he stomped on the appropriate plates with his boot heel, they popped up, revealing the seven secret compartments Han had personally installed as spice-smuggling bins beneath the floor.

"Caught you, Doole, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"Lando grabbed him by the yellow cravat at his throat. "What have you done with Han and Chewbacca?"

Doole seemed completely astonished, flailing his splayed hands in the air. "What are you talking about?" he croaked. As Lando glared down into the Rybet's huge eyes, Doole slipped one of his hands into his waistcoat and yanked free a small "hold-out" blaster pistol. Luke saw it and reacted instantly, shoving with his mind and using the Force to hurl Moruth Doole away from Lando.

The blaster went off, sending a deadly beam ricocheting around the Falcon's corridor. Doole fell backward, then scrambled to his feet. He fired at them again, but his mechanical eye had no time to focus, and the beam went wide. Doole dove down the ramp, bellowing for the guards. His mechanical eye fell off, clanging and rolling across the floor. He scrambled after it in a panic, feeling blindly with his hands.

Luke smacked the door controls, raising the ramp and sealing the hatch. "We should have kept him as a hostage," he said. "Now it's going to be a lot more difficult to get out of here."

Outside, Doole raised the alarm. Guards scrambled through the parked ships, drawing blasters, fastening their armor.

"Artoo, get to the computer!" Luke said.

Lando jumped into the chair behind the controls. "I doubt we can do anything for Han anymore. We need to get back and tell Leia. She can bring a full-scale occupation force to Kessel. We'll go over this place with a high-res scanner."

"If we get out of here alive," Luke said.

"Artoo," Lando called, "jack into the copilot's computer and tie into the hangar controls." The astromech droid chittered his willingness to help and rolled toward the navicomp console.

Outside in the hangar, security horns sounded. People ran around every which direction, not knowing where to go. Luke saw immediately that these mercenaries had far less experience working together than the sloppiest Imperial regiment. But the moment Lando lifted the ship off the landing-pad floor, everyone had an unmistakable target.

"Artoo, get that door field down!" Lando shouted. Using maneuvering thrusters, he edged the ship forward, picking up speed as they rose over the other parked fighters. Pilots scrambled into their ships, ready for a s.p.a.ce battle. In orbit around the moon, the capital ships did not yet seem aware of the situation.

Lando accelerated toward the wide hangar opening to s.p.a.ce. They could not see the invisible shield. Artoo bleeped and whistled, but the sounds were not positive. "Get the shield down!" Lando insisted.

Artoo's interface jack whirred as he worked with the hangar bay's computer, trying to skirt the pa.s.sword controls.

"We need the shield down now, Artoo!" Luke said.

The Falcon's rear thrusters kicked in and they lurched forward, gaining speed. "Come on," Lando said to the ship. "You can do it. Do it one last time for Han."

Artoo bleeped in triumph a moment before they shot through the opening. Luke flinched, but the shield dropped just in time. Alert lights began to wink on in the big battleships riding in orbit. Weapons systems warmed up, targeting modules locked on to aimpoints.

The Millennium Falcon soared into open s.p.a.ce as, behind them, the Kessel forces scrambled in pursuit.

Hunched in his dark robes, Tol Sivron came to visit Qwi Xux in her research room. He drew in a long, hissing breath, and his head-tails twitched with uneasiness as he stared at her setup. The Twi'lek administrator gave the impression of never having set foot inside an actual laboratory before--which seemed odd to Qwi, since he was in charge of the entire installation.

Qwi stopped her musical calculation with an atonal squawk.

"Director Sivron! What can I do for you?"

Tol Sivron demanded regular written reports, feasibility studies, and progress summaries; he hosted a weekly meeting among the scientists to share their ideas and their work in a frank and stimulating exchange.

But Tol Sivron did not make a habit of visiting.

He shuffled around the room, poking at things, kneading his knuckles, and looking at the standard equipment as if deeply interested.

He brushed his clawed fingertips over the calibration gauge of a weld-stress a.n.a.lyzer, muttering, "Mmm hmmm, good work!" as if Qwi herself had invented the common instrument.

"I just came to commend you for your consistently fine efforts, Dr.

Xux." Sivron stroked one of the vermiform head-tails draped around his neck; then his voice grew stern. "But I hope you are about finished with your endless iterations on the Sun Crusher project. We're past Grand Moff Tarkin's target date, you know, and we must move soon. I insist you write your final report and get all the doc.u.mentation in order. Submit it to my office as soon as possible."

Qwi blinked at him in annoyance. She had submitted five separate "final" reports already, but each time Sivron had asked her to rerun a particular simulation or to retest the structural welds in the Sun Crusher's quantum armor. He never gave any reasons, and Qwi got the impression that he never read the reports anyway. If it had been up to her, the Sun Crusher would have been ready for deployment two years ago.

She was getting bored with it, wanting to move on to a new design she could start from scratch and get back to the enjoyable, imaginative work again.

"You'll have the report by this evening, Director Sivron!" She would just send a repeat of the last one.

"Good, good," Sivron said, stroking his head-tail again. "I just wanted to make sure everything is in order."

For what? Qwi thought. We're not going anywhere. She hated it when the administrators and the military types kept sticking their noses in her work. Without another word Tol Sivron left.

Qwi stared after him, then activated the rarely used privacy lock on her door. Returning to her imaging terminal, she continued trying to crack the wall of pa.s.swords in front of her. She did like challenges, after all.

Qwi could not stop thinking about what Han Solo had told her. At first it was a new puzzle to solve, but then she finally began paying attention. To her all the prototypes she developed were abstract concepts turned into reality through mathematical music and brilliant intuitions.

She kept telling herself that she did not know, or care, what her inventions were used for. She could certainly guess, but she tried not to. She didn't want to know! She blocked those thoughts before they could surface. But Qwi Xux wasn't stupid.

The Death Star was supposed to be used to break apart depleted, dead planets to provide access to raw materials deep in the core. Right!

Had she thought up that excuse afterward? The World Devastators were supposed to be immense wandering factories taking useless rubble and fabricating scores of valuable industrial components. Right! Tarkin had been with her during the immense pressure of her original training. She knew what the man was capable of.

And the new Sun Crusher was--"What?"Han had said, raising his voice so that it hurt her fragile ears. "What in all the galaxy could the Sun Crusher be used for other than to completely wipe out all life in systems the Imperials don't like? You don't even have a bogus excuse like rubble mining. The Sun Crusher has one purpose only: to bring death to countless innocent people. Nothing more."

But Qwi could not possibly have the responsibility for lives on her hands. That wasn't part of her job. She just drew up blueprints, toyed with designs, solved equations. It exhilarated her to discover something previously considered impossible.

On the other hand, she was perfectly aware of what she was doing ... though feigned naivete provided such a nice excuse, such a perfect shield against her own conscience.

In the Maw databanks Qwi had discovered the complete "debriefing"

of Han Solo--protected by a pa.s.sword she had easily broken--full video instead of just a transcription. Sivron and Daala had indeed kept much of it from her--but why?

As Qwi watched the entire torture session, she could not believe her eyes. She had never suspected the information had been taken from him in that manner! The words on paper seemed so cool and cooperative.

But on a deeper, professional level she was outraged at Admiral Daala. Access to data was supposedly open to all Maw scientists. She had never been denied a single information request in twelve years inside the black hole cl.u.s.ter! But this was even worse. She hadn't just been denied access to the full report--she had been deceived into thinking Han's debriefing held no more data.

But information is meant to be shared! Qwi thought. How can I do my work if I don't have the pertinent data?

Qwi had little trouble breaking through the various pa.s.swords.

Apparently, no one had expected her to bother looking. She read the full report with sickened astonishment: the destruction of Alderaan, the attack on Yavin 4, the ambush of the Rebel fleet over Endor, the huge hospital ship and personnel carriers blown into micrometeoroids by the second Death Star's superlaser.

"What did you think they were going to be used for?" Han had said.

Qwi closed her eyes to the thought.

Focus on the problem. It had been a mantra of her childhood. Be distracted by nothing else. Solving the problem was the only important thing. Solving the problem meant survival itself. ...

As a child she remembered spending two years in the sterile, silent environment of the orbital education sphere above her homeworld of Omwat.

Qwi had been ten standard years old, the same age as her other nine companions, each selected from different Omwati honeycomb settlements.

From orbit the orange and green continents looked surreal, blurred by clouds and dimpled with canyons, blemished by upthrust mountains--nothing like the clean maps she had seen before.

But beside Qwi's educational sphere orbited Moff Tarkin's personal Star Destroyer. It had been a mere Victory cla.s.s ship, but powerful enough to rain death and ruin down on Omwat if the students should fail.

For two years life for Qwi had been an endless succession of training, testing, training, testing, with no other purpose than to cram the total knowledge of engineering disciplines into pliable young Omwati minds--or to burst their brains in the process. Tarkin's research had shown that Omwati children were capable of amazing mental feats, if pushed properly and sufficiently. Most of the young minds would collapse under the pressure, but some emerged like precious jewels, brilliant and creative. Moff Tarkin had wanted to test that possibility.

The gaunt, steel-hard man had stood in his dress uniform during important examinations, staring at the surviving Omwati children as they wrestled with problems that had stymied the Empire's best designers. Qwi remembered how alarmed they had been when one of her cla.s.smates, a young male named Pillik, suddenly fell to the floor in some kind of seizure, grasping his head and screaming. He managed to climb to his knees, weeping, before the guards grabbed him. He still grasped for his examination paper as they hauled him away, yelling that he wanted to finish his work.

In silence Qwi and her three surviving cla.s.smates went to the window of the educational sphere so they could watch as turbolasers from the Victory-cla.s.s Star Destroyer obliterated Pillik's honeycomb settlement in punishment for his failure.

Qwi could not be distracted by consequences. If her concentration faltered, everyone would die. She had to lock away all caring. Problems were pure, and safe, to be solved for their own sake. She could not allow herself to think beyond the abstract challenge at hand.

In the end Qwi had been the only one of her group who made it through the training. She received no instruction in biological sciences, saving her memory s.p.a.ce for more physics, mathematics, and engineering.

Tarkin had whisked her off to the new Maw Installation and placed her under the tutelage of the great engineer Bevel Lemelisk. Qwi had been in the Maw ever since.

Problems had to be solved for their own sake. If she allowed herself to be distracted by feelings, terrible things would happen. She remembered images of burning Omwati cities winking like faraway campfires from orbit, the laser-ignited wildfires that swept across the savannas of her world--but she had too many calculations to finish, too many designs to modify.

Qwi had salved her conscience by laying the responsibility on others. But the truth was, she created devices that had directly caused the deaths of entire civilizations, the destruction of whole worlds. With the Sun Crusher she could wipe out solar systems with the push of a b.u.t.ton.

Qwi Xux had a lot of thinking to do, but she didn't know how to go about this kind of pondering. This was an entirely new and different type of problem to solve.

Chewbacca stood like a statue, refusing to move and daring the keeper to use his power-lash again.

The keeper did.

Chewbacca roared at the pain lancing across his skin; his nerves writhed in the aftermath of the charge. He raised his hairy arms, seething with the desire to rip the fat, placid man's limbs from his spherical torso.

Fourteen stormtroopers leveled their blasters at him.

"Are you going back to work, Wookiee, or do I have to nudge the power setting up a couple more notches?" The keeper tapped the handle of the power-lash against his palm, gazing at Chewbacca with a bland expression. His complexion was dusty-looking and bloodless, as if no hint of life had ever pa.s.sed beneath the skin.

"Any other time I might have enjoyed the challenge of breaking you, Wookiee. I've been here fourteen standard years with an entire crew of Wookiee slaves. We lost a few during the process, but I cracked them all, and now they follow orders and do their work. But Admiral Daala insists that everything be in top-notch condition for mobilization by tomorrow."

He flicked the sizzling green tip of the lash in the air in front of Chewbacca's face, singeing some of the fur. Chewbacca peeled back his black lips and growled.

"I don't have time to play games right now," the keeper said. "If I have to waste any more time disciplining you, I'm going to dump you out into s.p.a.ce. Do you understand?"

Chewbacca considered roaring in his face, but the keeper looked serious. At the very least Chewbacca had to survive long enough to find out what had happened to Han. A long time ago Han had rescued Chewbacca from other enslavers, and he still owed the man a life debt. He gave a low grunt of acquiescence.

"Good, now get back to that a.s.sault shuttle!"

Chewbacca wore gray work coveralls with pockets to hold engine diagnostic tools and hydrospanners. None of the tools could be used as a weapon; Chewbacca had already checked that much out.

The gamma-cla.s.s a.s.sault shuttle took up a good portion of the Gorgon's lower hangar bay. Chewbacca had a small databoard listing the configurations for the tractor-beam projector and the deflector-shield generators. He had worked on other ships before, and he knew the Falcon inside out thanks to the many on-the-spot repairs he and Han had been forced to make. With the specs on the databoard he could easily service decades-old Imperial technology.

On the rear of the a.s.sault shuttle Chewbacca checked the exhaust nozzles of the thrust reactors and grudgingly tested the blaster-cannon mountings. In the front of the vessel a convenient boarding hatch allowed access for the command crew, but Chewbacca opted for the more rigorous method of popping open and climbing through one of the foldaway launch doors used to disgorge zero-G stormtroopers during a s.p.a.ce a.s.sault.

Inside, he had access to the engineering level, where he tinkered with the power modulators and the life-support systems. He restrained his urge to rip out circuits and damage the equipment--the keeper would execute him immediately, and such a minor sabotage would accomplish nothing.

Even subtle damage was likely to be discovered in the initial checkout procedure.

The a.s.sault shuttle's spartan pa.s.senger section held only benches for its complement of s.p.a.cetroopers, as well as power-coupled storage compartments for their bulky zero-G armor.

Up front Chewbacca powered up and checked out the command console, did a test run of the twin-tandem flight computers ... and thought about uprooting the chairs on which the five members of the command crew would sit.

Outside in the Gorgon's hangar bay the fat keeper shouted and lashed at the air. Chewbacca felt a surge of anger upon hearing cries of agony from the other cowed Wookiee slaves. He knew nothing about his fellow captives; he had been held in a separate cell, and they were not allowed to speak to each other.

Chewbacca wondered how long it had been since these exhausted slaves had touched the branches of their home trees.

"Get working!" the keeper yelled. "We have a lot that needs to be done today! Three hundred ships on the Gorgon alone!" And Chewbacca knew the three other star destroyers had an equal number of TIE fighters, blastboats, and a.s.sault shuttles.

Chewbacca clenched his fist around an upraised storage lid, bending it noticeably. He wanted to know why Admiral Daala insisted on such desperate speed.

Qwi Xux did not like to be muscled around by stormtroopers. In her years at the Maw Installation, she had learned to ignore the rigid troopers marching around the corridors in white armor, in endless robotic training and formations that made no sense at all. Did they all have faulty memories, or what? Once she learned something, she didn't need to keep drilling, drilling, drilling. Qwi paid little attention to them anymore--until a squad marched into her laboratory and insisted that she follow them.

Only moments earlier Qwi had shut down her illicit database searches, and she had disengaged the privacy lock on her lab's entryway.

She had no reason to think the stormtroopers suspected anything, but she still felt unreasoning terror.

The troopers folded around her in a protective bubble as they marched her along the tiled corridors. "Where are you taking me?" Qwi finally managed to ask.